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Sunday, October 18, 2015

Emily Dreyfuss reports, "Hello. I am a disembodied metal moving machine with an iPad for a face."

I have been part robot since May. Instead of legs, I move on
gyroscopically stabilized wheels. Instead of a face, I have an iPad
screen. Instead of eyes, a camera with no peripheral vision. And instead
of ears, a tinny microphone that crackles and hisses with every high
note.

I'm a remote worker; while most of Wired is in San Francisco, I
live in Boston. We IM. We talk on the phone. We tweet at each other,
but I am often left out of crucial face-to-face meetings, spontaneous
brainstorm sessions, gossip in the kitchen.

So my boss found a solution: a telepresence robot from Double
Robotics, which would be my physical embodiment at headquarters.
Specifically, an iPad on a stick on a Segway-like base. The
telepresence-robot market is crowded, ranging from high-end offerings
like iRobot's Ava (starting price: $69K) to the relatively affordable
Double, which starts at $2,499. The company says it has sold nearly
5,000 of them since its launch in 2012.

The first time I opened the Double interface in Chrome and clicked on
an icon of my robot 3,000 miles away, I was greeted by the pixelated
image of my boss's torso and a few headless co-workers. There probably
were some instructions somewhere that I should have read, but hadn't. I
clicked around. Nothing. I tried the arrow keys and, boom, jolted out of
the robot's charging dock and toward the onlookers. I was like a foal,
learning to walk.

Before I ever tried the robot, I was sure I would hate the thing. I
thought it would make me small and flat and foolish. I thought it would
be annoying to deal with, would require me to wear pants. (Something we
remote workers often don't do, world!) I thought it would make me a
novelty, a sideshow, a joke.

When I booted up, some of my original fears were realized: I was
disoriented and silly and helpless. I was a spectacle. People ogled and
took pictures. I felt like a dog, the recipient of gawking smiles. But,
more importantly, I was surprised to find, being a robot is delightful.
It's thrilling. I was in the office! There was the kitchen! There was
Sam! Hi, everyone! I am here!Read more...

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About Me

Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.